Quo Animo
by Promiscuous Misprocuous
Summary: Sometimes, even when you don't understand, all you can do is close your eyes and clench your fists and trust that everything is going to be alright in the end.
1. The first and second bits

_**Quo Animo:**_

_The first and second bits._

Remus

_It's no big deal. I follow a very strict moral code and none of the guidelines have been breached. I haven't kill anyone, I haven't hurt anyone, nothing has been irreparably broken... I just don't see the problem, here._ Over and over again, these words race through my mind at three hundred thousand meters per second. This more eloquent greeting, however, is running through my head somewhat too fast for my mouth to catch. My actual response to being interrupted during this private activity is limited to your name. "Sirius—"

You slowly take stock of the situation. The disbelief is as evident as the individual thought processes that run through your head. You glance away as if this is just a dream, couldn't possibly be anything other than a dream, and looking away will make me disappear.

No, Sirius my good lad. Your eyes did not and do not deceive you. In front of you is in fact your dear Moony, and he is in fact wielding a shard of glass, and he is in fact using it to slice at the tender skin on his wrists. But he's not trying to kill himself. _No, I swear I'm not. And, let's face it; you never would have known if you hadn't been here instead of in class where you're supposed to be. Sure, my bed isn't exactly the most private place to indulge, but it's not like I'm going to cut myself in the bathroom._

_Just so you know, this isn't because of any emotional turmoil or an inability to cope with my so obviously terrible life. It's because I like it. This is how I get off. You grab your prick and wank, I grab my glass and slice. It's really quite a wonderful thing, really._ But my flailing lips still fail to grasp the words. And so I'm stuck floundering, just looking at you. It's heartbreaking. You're an open book, Sirius, and I'm an avid reader. I just can't help but notice that small flare of a nostril, that miniscule quiver of your lip, the thin line of light glinting off of the liquid rimming your eyes. I can imagine that you'd be a pretty crier since you're a pretty everything else, but that is the last thing that I ever want to see. And because I know that this is making you sad, I set the glass aside.

And then, suddenly, my mouth can work again, but you've already started talking. "Moony," your voice breaks. My heart cracks in half. Your mouth moves but no sound comes out. You reach your hands out and touch my arm. Your fingers slide up to my wrist where you gently wrap your fingers around the skin being careful to not touch the areas that have been cut. You look at me, and I know that you don't understand. You look at the bleeding cuts, and I know that you can't understand. I can't explain it to you in a way that will make you understand. I've never thought of myself as misunderstood since I met you, but now it's starting to all come back.

I hate it.

I hate it even more that it might make me cry. You might think that the tears have something to do with the blood running from my wrists when they wouldn't. They'd have nothing to do with the cuts, and everything to do with you.

Your easy ways have always calmed me. You have always had a moment for me when things got to be overwhelming. I could talk, you could listen, we could both be something more than what we were. And it was nice. Wonderful, even. But I can feel that being over now. This very knowledge is a slice in our bond to you even if not to me. It won't be the same. You'll never understand me again and I can taste it like blood in my mouth and I can feel it like salt in the shallow slices on my wrists.

And it hurts, but I don't like it.

"Sirius," and you look at me with those eyes. Those beautiful, broken eyes. And, of its own volition, my hand rises. It cups your cheek. Then come the words, but they're not the ones I want. Instead, it's a cliché; one that I would have avoided if I had thought about it for even an instant.

"It's not what you think."

Mistake.

We were both in something of a trance before, but this snaps you right out of it. Now you're not broken on the outside, just angry. If you were steel and I had caused a crack, your anger would be a super heated oven, welding you back together. But it only heals the cosmetic rift, and even then it leaves a scar. There's still a crack inside that's much more difficult to mend.

Your face turns hard. Your lips thin. Your hand tightens around my wrist. I want to watch as the blood wells up in faster, larger beads, but I know that it would be a bad move. "It's not what I think?" Your other hand snatches mine from where it still is on your cheek and you hold the meat of my thumb hard enough that I can't escape, but not hard enough that I can enjoy it. "Then what is it?"

I can't tell you that I'm a masochist. I can't tell you that I think the blood is beautiful. I can't tell you that I'm addicted to cutting myself. I can't tell you that it feels better than the best hand-delivered orgasm. I just can't. My eyeballs roast inside my skull. "I can't tell you."

The hurt resonates from you loud and clear as chimes from church bells. Just like that you're not angry anymore. Now you're pleading with me and I can see it in your eyes, and I can hear it in your breath, and I can smell it in your sweat, and I can taste it from two feet away as it seeps out of your pores. "Remus, you can't do this to yourself."

Suddenly I'm the angry one. I yank my arms away from you and the hurt chimes louder. "Why the hell not? What's wrong with it? I'm not trying to kill myself if that's what you're worried about," you think you're so righteous. I can't do this to myself? If I couldn't do this to myself I wouldn't. I can't do this to _you_ is what you mean. But you can't say that. It makes it sound like you're in control of me when you want so much to pretend you're not.

And you're angry again. "It's not about that! It's about you hurting! If this is how you have to deal with your pain there's something wrong! I thought you could fucking talk to me, but I guess you'd rather sit here and be a suicidal idiot," you're baiting me. I know you're baiting me and you know that I know. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to waste it. Instead, I accept your gauntlet—let it be the fuel that gives me the strength to tell you what you demand to know.

I force myself to calm my voice even as the fire in my chest makes my heart sprint. "I'm not hurting _emotionally_. I don't just let things build up, I let them go. This? This is purely physical," I let a grim smile crawl across my face when I see that the beginning of my explanation has already started to make you fall from your high, high horse. "You've heard of masochism, haven't you, Sirius?" I know you haven't, but I have to ask. It has always pissed you off when I know something you don't. "It means you like pain. It's not just an outlet, it's not something that you try to avoid because, well, it hurts. It means that you enjoy it. That you _want_ it. Pain, that is. You seek it out," you look like I just spit in your face. Surprise. Bewilderment.

Fear.

It completely drains me of my anger-induced confidence. You drain me.

"Remus—"

I stop you with a shake of my head. I'm not done yet. I can barely bring myself to say it and the blood is starting to stain my sheets. I look you straight in the face with all the strength I can muster. "I need it. So beat me. Please. Cut me, hit me, bite me, even whip me if you want to. I don't care. I'm addicted. If I don't get it somewhere, I—" _do__ it myself_.

And I can't even finish my sentence, but it's not because I'm ashamed. Embarrassed, certainly. I'm embarrassed that you saw me like this, I'm embarrassed that I told you to hurt me, and I'm embarrassed that I actually admitted to being addicted, but I'm not ashamed of myself.

When you grab me, I stiffen until I realize that the hug you're giving me isn't a one-last-hug, but I don't wrap my arms around you in return until I feel your tears soak through my shirt at the deltoid. I know that you don't care that my arms are bleeding spots on your school uniform that we both know won't come out because blood never does.

_You were never meant to find out, Sirius, and I'm sorry that you did. But I'm not sorry that I did it. I never will be. I can't promise you that I'll never do it again, but I can promise that you'll never see it._ You continue to cry into my shoulder. I don't know why you're crying, but I'm not stupid enough to ask. I just let you stay there, your tears and snot being absorbed by the cotton fibers of my shirt, my arms wrapped around you, yours likewise around me.

It feels like the end of an era. The time for being children gone, the time for becoming both more and less arrived, but I know that it's just a temporary feeling: the result of my guilt at putting you through this whole ordeal.

It's inevitable that we'll be back to normal within the week.

* * *

Sirius

_Fuck, Remus. We need to talk. I know that I've pretty much left you alone about the whole thing for the past week, but it just doesn't feel right. Seeking out pain like that just isn't normal. No. Normal isn't the right word. Healthy. It's not healthy. So—_

You're sitting right next to me in potions and, as usual, you're studying the notes while I'm studying you. You're acting so fucking normal. Your eyes flick from the blackboard to your paper, a little worry line shows up for just a moment just above your nose. You chew on your lip. A hand rises to scratch the bit of stubble on your chin that you didn't shave off this morning because I hid your razor.

Yeah. I hid your razor. That's what this terrible, new paranoia has driven me to. I know that stopping the symptoms doesn't stop the problem, but it is a start I suppose. It's at least a way to get rid of the effects until I can come up with a real solution to your little cutting problem. I even know that you weren't even using a razor, but that doesn't mean you haven't or won't. I have to take away as many possibilities from you as I can because, otherwise, I just may lose the little bit of sanity I have.

Class is dismissed. I wait for you to gather your stuff before we leave together. We're the last ones out of the classroom and I stop you just outside the door. The sleeves of your standard uniform shirt are rolled down. You know what's coming and try to stop me, but I won't hear it.

"Sirius—" but it's futile. I ignore it when you struggle and object.

There are new cuts. Red, shallow lines running across your skin like thread. Like strings of fate, tying us together with a bond exactly as strong as blood. I look to you for an explanation like I would if I didn't already know what's going on.

"It's not a problem," you tell me.

"It's not a problem?" I don't believe you. I can't believe you. "It's hardly been a week and you've already gone and done it again. I think that's a problem," I would go on, but you cut me off with a few quick, confusing words.

"I meant the cutting, not the algolagnia."

I would give both my legs and my left hand to know what that means without having to ask, but you're not saying anything else. I shift awkwardly before I break down and ask, "What's that?"

"The addiction to pain," and you're silent again, watching me like you're afraid I'm going to break.

And I think I might. I've known you for six years and some change, and I never would have guessed this about you. I'd have never known. It was never a sneaking suspicion, never even a lurking possibility, and the news that came all over my face seven days ago is more overwhelming now than it was then. "Addiction. Are you even really sure there _is_ such a thing?" It's the last thing I would have wanted to say, but the first thing that actually comes out my mouth. I'd say that it wasn't my fault, but who else to I have to blame?

Your eyebrows lower so far they shadow your cheekbones. You look like you want to hit me, and I would absolutely forgive you that, but you don't. Instead you clench your fists and turn to walk away. I want to let you. After my complete dickery you deserve to be able to, but instinct makes me react in ways that don't necessarily agree with my higher mental faculties.

I grab you before you can get out of reach and push your back against the wall, trapping your body with my arms. I don't want you leaving. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"No, you shouldn't have," your rightly righteous answer.

"It's just—" my own uncertainty cuts me off mid-sentence as I try to find the right way to say the words, but you interrupt my thoughts before the question translates into speech.

"Why does it bother you so much?"

It's a good question. I even have an answer for it. The only problem is that I can't tell you. My problem is that you're sick. I was raised in a house where incest is practically the norm, with people I hated. They enjoyed this sort of thing, too. You know. The other side of it. And I hated them for it and despite it. So, you see? I can't tell you that this small character trait actually changes the way that I think about you, most importantly, I can't under any circumstances let you know that the words you spoke to me last week excited me in ways that I find both terrifying and arousing. So I answer, "You're my friend and I can't stand to see you hurting," It's a partial truth, and therefore a partial lie, but it's the safest option I have.

You try to push me away, but I don't allow that to happen having already figured you were going to try to get away. This is too important for me to just let you leave.

"But I _like_ it," you insist, giving up on escape for the moment and slumping against the wall, carefully avoiding looking at me and keeping your voice low. You look uncomfortable, but you don't seem ashamed.

"But it's just the way you're dealing with an internal hurt! I see it and I think of _how_ you might feel, not _what_ you might feel," I've got to defend my half-truth no matter how cheesy it sounds or how much I hate myself for it later. I expect an exasperated sigh, maybe an eye roll, maybe even a chuckle. What I don't expect is for you to become so angry.

"It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH INNER TURMOIL! I'm not some STUPID KID who can't deal with his terrible life. The whole point of it, in its ENTIRETY, without leaving _anything_ out, is that I_ like_ it. I _LIKE_ pain. Were you not listening to what I told you the other night?"

No. I was listening. I just hoped you would have forgotten. "Take it easy, Moony. This whole idea is new to me. You can't expect me to instantly understand. I just need some time."

You shrug unsympathetically. "Experience is supposed to be the best teacher. Maybe it'll cut down your learning time if you just give it a try."

The tips of my ears start to burn. I know that I heard you right, but I couldn't be understanding correctly. "What?"

"Go ahead," you invite. "Hit me, or something. I'm not particular."

"Um," I would pay money to see the expression on my face right now. Or to take the smug look off of yours. I let go of you and step away carefully. I think that our conversation is over, but apparently you don't agree. With each step I take back you come toward me. I plan to escape the situation, but I'm cornered before I know that escape isn't an option anymore.

"Really," it's a command when you say it. If we weren't the same height, I might be able to get away, but you've got the advantage, now. "Go ahead and do something."

I'm afraid. Of you. The only time in my life that this has happened before is the first time that I saw you change into the Wolf. So I panic. My action is more one of a desperate attempt to leave than it is an endeavor to hurt you, but it only manages to accomplish the latter: I slide my fingers along your scalp, I clutch, and I pull.

You don't stagger back with the direction of the force; you just stare at me and pull slowly away, apparently not having expected me to do anything in the first place, and seeming to have come back to yourself.

But now I'm the one who's not done. Before I'm even fully aware of what I'm doing the fingers of my other hand are tangled in your hair too, and both hands are thrusting your head against the wall that I had you set against before. You're watching me carefully, but you aren't afraid. You're not afraid when I slam the rest of your body into the side of the hall with bruising force, you're not afraid when my fists clench tightly enough in your hair to rip out a few strands, you're not afraid when I lower my face and bite your neck hard enough that you start to bleed, and you're definitely not afraid when I move to give the same harsh treatment to the skin just below your ears. You gasp, and you moan, and you sigh, and there is a perfect, beautiful mingling of pain and pleasure, but there is no fear.

Remus, I think I'm starting to get this, but you've got it wrong: pain is addictive to cause, not to feel.


	2. The third and fourth bits

**_Quo Animo:_**

_The third and fourth bits._

Remus

My lips are swollen and sore from being sucked on so hard, and are bleeding from two sets of clashing teeth. Judging from the stinging, I have no fewer than five open, bleeding gashes on my neck, all of them in the shape of your incisors and a few more over my back, abdomen, and thighs respectively. My ass hurts like a bitch and my entire body aches in a way that I've never felt before in my entire life.

If this is sex, I want to have it every single hour until the moment I die.

I chance a look at your sleeping form next to me and can't help but smile. Your lips are slightly parted and looking nearly as swollen as mine feel, thin black hairs stand out starkly against the pale skin of your bare chest as it evenly rises and falls with each breath, light blue sheets stained with my blood rest smugly over your prominent, narrow hip bones.

Thank God you're asleep, or I'd be rambling. Well, my mind would be. My mouth would be too busy trying to catch one of the millions of thoughts racing by to actually say anything, so you'd take it upon yourself to break the silence and end up saying something that would make me angry. You have a tendency to do that. You'd look at me, your beautiful, bold eyebrows lowering in accusation, your beautiful, bold eyes shining bright with anger, your beautiful, bold lips scowling in a somehow still fetching way. Then you'd ask me what I'm doing in your bed. You'd accuse me of drugging you or casting a spell on you or taking advantage of you in a sensitive time or some such bullshit, and I'd storm off angrily, telling you to fuck yourself and you'd say that it's better than fucking me, and then we'd never talk to each other again. The marauders would split up, but it'd really just be me leaving because James is closer to you and Peter does whatever James does, and then I'd be a pariah again and it would all be terribly dramatic and overdone, and I'd just have to cut myself instead of getting screwed into a euphoric oblivion every night and lunch hour and sometimes in the mornings. And this would never happen again and that is the last thing that I want, especially with that "every hour on the hour" plan that I have. Sure it might be difficult, what with classes and everything and the fact that _no one_ has that kind of stamina, but I'm sure I could make it work if I really thought about it. You'd probably be a tougher cookie to crack on that.

You know, with me being a man and all, and you being straight and all…

_But, wait. Are you? I mean, this whole business with the gay sex makes a pretty suspicious case for the opposite, you know? I don't mean to question your masculinity, or anything. I don't expect you to be a flamer, I promise. I don't really expect anything, really. I just hope that you might agree to do this again sometime. Sometimes. Many times. Any time. I'm not particular really._

And my mind is babbling, anyway. How typical. You lie there stoic and beautiful as my mind metaphorically rips itself to scraps. Maybe nothing's changed between us at all.

But I'm not out of the woods, yet. You have to wake up eventually and I'll have to deal with it all then, anyway.

I feign sleep for a moment and roll over so that my right hand is splayed across your chest and my head is nestled where your arm meets your shoulder. I discreetly look at your face through one open eye to make sure that you're still sleeping and then allow the other to open, too. I just want to touch you. Who knows if I'll ever get to again.

When you stir, I very nearly stop breathing. I want to put off dealing with this confrontation as long as I possibly can. I may as well delude myself into thinking that this may be a recurring thing as long as I can before you awaken and my dreams flee.

I'm to the point where I'm so paranoid about the whole confrontation that I'm happy to just lie here and watch you sleep forever when the warmth of your body and the soft, steady rhythm of your breath finally lull me off to sleep.

Your panic-stricken movements are what eventually awaken me. I hesitantly glance over to see the slightly fuzzy features of your face contorting into different levels of hysteria as you realize where you are and what you've done. My heart turns to lead, poisoning me far more instantly than any toxin would. You're going to be an ass about this. I can tell.

But my expectations are torn asunder when you sit up to look at me and your eyes widen in surprise and…fear? Your lips part into a fetching "oh" and you seem to struggle with yourself about what to make your body do. "What have I done?"

Even in my present sated and dreading state I can tell that it's a rhetorical question, so I continue to lie and let you sort things out for yourself.

You turn to me, looking at each bite mark on my exposed torso in turn, cataloguing it in your brain, becoming more and more upset with each passing moment. "I did that?" you finally ask, quiet voice cracking as you indicate one particularly deep abrasion right below my clavicle. If it weren't you, I'd be trying to hide my scars instead of proudly wearing my new wounds.

I nod carefully, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "I was asking for it, if it helps."

Silence may have been a better answer.

"It doesn't help."

I don't see what the big deal is. If I were you, I'd be more worried about the fact that I just had sex with a man, one of your closest friends no less, than I would be about the fact that I bit harder than I thought I did.

"I'll go," I tell you, figuring that you need some time to yourself, and moving to vacate your mattress, but you stop me.

"No, no. Stay," it's a request, but I treat it as a command. Your next words seem reluctant. "We need to talk about this."

_Right now?_ But, of course you're right. This needs to be dealt with right away before it has a chance to fester like one of the wounds on my neck.

_Alright. Here's how I see it: Let's do this again. A lot. I don't really know what happened to you in that hallway back there, but I like it. This sadistic, domineering side of you is really_ really_ hot, and I won't cut anymore if you let it out more often. So let's both get what we want and—_

Your struggle for words finally ends. "I don't know what happened to me, back there, but it won't happen again. I'm… I'm not… like that. I don't—"

"It's alright," I interject when I feel that your grasping for words is getting too painful to listen to. "I understand. It was a mistake. You were possessed or something. I know you're not 'like that.'" And I _do_ know. I never expected this of you. Hardly even bothered to hope. And there were good reasons for that.

This was one of them.

This terrible, awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing conversation that we're not having is filling the air between us and around us with a tension that I've never felt with you before. It's depressing. Even a week ago when you walked in on me with a bleeding wrist and a piece of glass in my hand, there wasn't this strain between us so much as there was disbelief and disappointment. Your disbelief at what I was doing, my disappointment at your inability to accept it. That was bad. This is worse.

There are some feelings that fade quickly and some that are renewed with every day. Our last confrontation was one of the sooner. This is one of the latter. I can tell already.

We'll both mope for a while, you and I. We'll turn red every time we see each other, avoid eye contact, evade any situation that places us together. You'll go through girlfriends at the rate of three a week just to prove to yourself that you're still a man, and I'll retreat back into my books and my knives. Eventually we'll become comfortable enough to look at each other again. Maybe we'll even talk again after a month or three. But we'll never be like we were a year ago, two weeks ago, yesterday, this morning—It'll never be the same.

We'll never be the same.

I get up to leave, assuming that our talk is over, but you surprise me again.

"No." It's a firm negation. Not quite an exclamation, but certainly more commanding than a mere passive phrase.

No has just become my new favorite word.

"I wasn't 'possessed or something.' I knew exactly what I was doing and I was in complete control of my actions and I take full responsibility for them," you're not looking at me. You're looking at your hands as your short, solid fingers with nails chewed down to the skin frenetically pick at your cuticle in an anxious matter. "There's no use in calling this a mistake. I wasn't under the influence of anything and neither were you," you seem to have finally found your resolve because you're finally looking at me again, watching my face for any sign of a reaction. "I don't regret this."

You get a reaction. To my credit I don't fling my arms around your neck and start sucking on your mouth, but my maw gapes in open surprise and something suspiciously akin to hope starts eating away at the block of lead that had so easily set in my stomach. _You don't regret it? What the shit does that mean?_

"But it can't happen again."

_What?_ "Let me try to understand this. We had sex," you don't cringe. "And you don't regret it," you do cringe. "But it can't happen again. I'm missing a link somewhere in the progression."

You flounder for words. I pay an inordinate amount of attention to the sheets. Your eyes redden. My throat chokes up. You finally give up on speech and just reach out to touch one of the wounds you so thoughtfully, lovingly, beautifully inflicted.

"I can't--" your tone is pleading, your voice is rough.

I don't understand what it is you can't do. I don't understand what it is that you're trying to say. I don't understand anything about this situation, but I'm not callous, Sirius. I understand that you're asking me to just let this go. I can't ask you again.

I send you what I hope is an understanding look. "It's alright," I lie. "It won't happen again," I truth.

Neither of us says anything more.

* * *

Sirius

Things have changed between us, Moony, and it's subtle and enormous and unbearable. James hasn't noticed anything yet, but we both know that it won't be long before he does.

I keep thinking about you. Staring at you. Dreaming about you. That's why I've been avoiding touching you at all costs. I know that if I do I'll hurt you again and, as much as neither of us would mind on a physical level, I'd feel like a pervert for doing something like that or taking advantage of something like this. And I'm not like that. I can't hurt you for fun. It's not normal. It's not healthy.

It's not okay.

I haven't been the kind of person who inflicts pain for fun since I was a seven-year old pulling the legs off of spiders or torturing the house elves. I like to think I've matured since then. Need to, even.

If it had just been you and me getting caught up in the moment like any normal horny teenagers I wouldn't be able to care much less. Sure I'd have cared a little, but not as much as I do now. I made you bleed. And we liked it. What a pair we make.

You're curled up in the loveseat in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room, a book resting sideways on the cushion so you can read it. You've got your glasses on and your hair is splayed around your head. Your sleeves are long. They look innocent enough, but I know what they cover.

My gaze inexorably slides back to your face. You're so intent on your reading that you don't know I'm watching you. Your golden eyes flick mildly along the page at a pace that I'd never try to set as your lips half form a syllable every few words. A hand comes up to scratch your neck and my attention is immediately drawn to a mark I made there.

Apparently, I'm not the only one to notice it.

"Hey, Moony!" It's James. His cheeks are flushed and he's got a huge grin on his face. "Come over here!" He makes an overlarge gesture that matches his words with the hand that is not holding the half-drained bottle of fire whiskey.

I watch as you carefully mark your place with a bookmark (because it's sacrilege to dog-ear a page, of course) and set down the book so that no one will take your spot. Then you walk over to James and gently take the bottle out of his hand. The poor guy's so drunk he doesn't even notice. "What is it, James?"

You're so formal and dignified that James' next actions come across with greater comedic value than they would have had he done the same thing to me.

"I wanna see something," he slurs as he grabs the bottom of your shirt.

An unmerited feeling of rage assaults me like an alley rapist, but I start a pretense of laughter to cover for the unwarranted impulse to push him away. James often gets like this when he's sloshed. Kid's a lightweight. You calmly knock his hands off of you and start backing away. Just because you're used to it doesn't mean that you'll play along with his antics.

"Really, James. What is this all about?" The two of you are starting to attract attention from the other occupants of the room.

"I just wanna see," he insists with the innocence of a four-year-old trying to take a sip of his father's scotch or play drums on his mother's good china. I start to laugh in earnest. You pick up speed.

So does he. You're pulling ahead and he's tripping all over himself trying to catch you, but he gets lucky. You dodge at a right angle and he falls right into you. Sits on you. Starts pulling off your shirt as you struggle and try to convince him to let you up. He's stronger. He weighs more. So, pissed as he is, you lose this battle, Moony.

I stop laughing. The sight of your skin feels like it should only belong to me. Most of your numerous scars are from the transformation. The rest are from your own ministrations. My additions to the mélange have hardly had time to scab over and almost look more like love bites than they do like real ones. I very purposefully avoid looking at your arms.

James doesn't take any notice of your old wounds or your new ones. He just leans over, presses his mouth to your thin, pale, scarred stomach and blows a raspberry.

I choke on my spit in a strange mix between amusement and something else and he's laughing so hard that he's not breathing. Having resigned yourself to your fate, you're just lying there, propped up on one arm and trying to swat James away with the other in a pose that is needlessly sexy. If you weren't ticklish, the smile you're fighting off wouldn't be on your face.

But James isn't done yet. "Moony's got a hickey!" He exclaims overlooking the numerous chomps that I took out of your person.

I try to look surprised. You turn beat red. No one else in the room cares enough to look away from their respective activities.

"Hickeys," he corrects himself acutely. "Who're they from Moony?" A dopey grin adorns his face. "Someone I know?" The grin grows. "Someone _you_ know?" His smile gets large enough that it creaks. "Was he good?" I choose to not be surprised that James knows the culprit is male.

I can't help but mockingly repeat the question. "Yeah, Moony. Was he good?" Four days ago, I'd have been two inches away making kissy-faces at you. Four days ago I hadn't molested you in the hall outside the potions room. Four days ago you'd never had a hickey in your life.

You shoot a reproachful glare in my direction and squirm enough to shield your face from your tormentor, but I'm afraid that you made a tactical error, Moony dearest: you've got more on your back and the bite marks are deep enough that I'd be identifiable from my dental records.

"On your back, too!" Comes James' exclamation before he looks at me sagely and answers his own question. "He was good."

You hide your face in your arms, but it doesn't matter. Your neck is blushing too, and it only serves to stretch the muscles in your back across your bones in another needlessly sexy pose.

You were too busy getting completely dominated to give me any marks proving that I'm the other half of the equation, so I'm safe from discovery, but feel smug at James' concession nonetheless.

I almost think that he's going to insist that you take your pants off too, but his attention span doesn't last that long before he runs off to bother someone else. Probably Lily, poor girl. But at least now he's not touching you anymore.

I pick up your shirt and hand it to you gently. "How many of them did you make, yourself?" I'm talking about the scars and you know it, but you don't even acknowledge my question. I'm not going to get an answer out of you. Instead you sit there, buttoning up your uniform shirt in the middle of the Common Room like it's the most natural thing in the world.

James is gone, now. We're out of our comfort place. You're out of the safety zone. I can talk freely to you without having to worry about how he would react and you know that I'll take full advantage of the situation. But you don't want to have this conversation where other people can overhear us so, shirt half buttoned due to clumsy fingers, you lead me up to the dormitories where you don't have to worry about it. It's a smart move on your part. I'm not quiet when I yell and we never seem to know what direction our conversations are going to take, these days.

I choose to not remind you of the book you left on the chair in favor of keeping you to myself, even if just for a little while.

"Why aren't we talking, Moony? Why are we so different, now?" It's not the first question that I intend to ask and I already know the answer, but it seems important that the silent consensus become sound waves.

The look you give me is impossible. For a moment, I can't breathe. "We had sex, Sirius. That changes things."

It's the answer that I expected verbatim. I'm afraid to ask my next question, but I try to force it out, anyway. "Did you… um… did—"

You take pity on me as you always do, answering the question that I'm too much of a pussy to get all the way out. "It was great. I'm not going to bother lying to you. We're in enough of a mess, already," your fingers are playing with the hem of your shirt. You're nervous.

"And what mess is that?" I feel like an asshole for asking.

You change. Nothing changes physically, but on the next level I'm not even looking at the same person. "You explain it, Padsy. I'm not going to answer all of the difficult questions and its my turn to ask one, anyway."

I visibly flinch, but you're too angry to really care. "Well, uh," I'll answer this for you if it kills me. "Everything's complicated. We don't know, uh, what to… expect from each other or, eh, how to," I clear my throat for a long moment and reach an arm up to scratch my head. The floor is somehow very interesting. "Act? Deal with each other? Fuck, Moony, I don't know. This entire situation is so messed up that I don't even know what to start with."

And just like that, you're yourself again and I've never been happier to see you in my life.

"What do you think of me?" you ask, completely serious. I'm left floundering in a great wide ocean while you find a chunk of flotsam to keep your head above the water.

"Sorry?" It's said more to buy me time than anything else.

"You said that this whole thing's so fucked up you don't even know what to start with. I figure this is as good a place as any. What do you think of me?"

It's so like you to try to put a logical spin on a completely ridiculous situation. "Um, you're smart," I supply hopefully, trying to think up adjectives to describe you on the spur of the moment that don't have anything to do with your pain problem or mine. I don't want to have to bring up the other night, but it's hard what with that being at the top of my mind and my floundering for words. "And you're…" I trail off. "You're nice, and—" _a great lay?_ My mind supplies hopefully. I cut myself off before I can think too much in that direction.

"Don't limit yourself, Sirius," you tell me. "Would you like for me to go first?" All I can do is nod mutely in agreement, so you begin.

"You're beautiful," you start, honesty dripping from your words like honey from a silver spoon. "You are funny and bold and strong. You're kind and infuriating, and you're sexy and stupid and loyal, pitiful and admirable. And terrifying. But, more than anything, you're beautiful."

The words roll off your tongue like so many waves breaking on a shore and the honest emotion shining through the screen of your face at every new word honestly frightens me. It's overwhelming. I have to wonder if you've thought about this extensively before, and decide that it's likely. You're much too smart to not have thought of this before. I don't know if I'm capable of returning the kindness of describing you so candidly, but I feel that I owe it to you to at least try to return the favor. I open my mouth to speak, but you're not done yet.

"You don't have to provide your own list, you know. Honestly I'm kind of afraid to know what you think of me and I don't want anything less than the truth. You have all the time in the world to think about it or blow it off. I don't really expect an answer," and you walk away. You just turn around and move, not giving me a chance to speak, no drama about it.

I can only nod in response and watch as you disappear into the washrooms.

* * *

A/N:

I'm not going to beg for reviews, but I would appreciate con-crit and if there are any typos please point them out. Even if it's just a "that 'if' is an 'of'" or something like that. I've had this thing sitting on my computer for years and I've looked over it enough times that I'd probably cry if I had to read it again.

Also, I hope you enjoyed it. I've worked decently hard (harder than I work on school, anyway) on writing and editing this guy and its sequential companions. It's not done, yet, but I've got almost 10,000 words over the course of six bits (four of which are already online, now) written thus far, and it's taken me several years on and off to write and edit what I have to my satisfaction. The updating of this story will be a very slow process because I won't post anything that I'm not satisfied with. Please forgive me my pace, but know that it will come eventually.

Thanks for reading,

Misprocuous


	3. The fifth and sixth bits

**_Quo Animo:_**

_The fifth and sixth bits._

Remus

Our relationship can only get so awkward before we melt into puddles of painfully angsty, overdramatic teenage goo. Figuratively speaking, of course. Then again, this is Hogwarts. Anything is possible, so I suppose that we could literally melt into puddles, but I'd really rather not think of that. I can't imagine it would be very comfortable and the puddles would likely be toxic to anyone unlucky enough to inhale in their general vicinity.

We haven't spoken since that night. Actually, I've been perfectly willing to talk but I've decided that you're calling the shots on this one, so it would be more accurate to say _you_ haven't spoken to _me_ since that night.

It's okay for now. It's not like we've been unable to be in the same room or anything. In fact, at the moment we're seated across from each other enjoying a rather nice breakfast, such as Hogwarts is wont to provide. Peter and James are having a contest to see who can stuff the most bacon in his mouth without swallowing it and you're judging. I'm reading the _Daily Prophet _and pretending that I can't hear it when you tell Peter things like "if you didn't have a gag reflex you'd have this thing in the bag." It makes me think entirely too much about… things that are undignified to think about.

That's not to say there's any more dignity in doing it than in thinking about it, but—

The flow of my thoughts is interrupted when I turn the page in the paper. Words are easy to interrupt. Thoughts are harder. There are not many things that would interrupt my very thoughts. This is definitely among those blessedly few things. I feel my eyes prickling at the corners before I excuse myself politely and calmly walk to the Gryffindor Common Room where I proceed to uncharacteristically kick a couch before going up the stairs to the dorm. Here, I set a quick silencing charm on my bed after having drawn the curtains and indulge in a very unmanly scream.

Lately, things have been getting pretty bad. I don't just mean with me, I mean with the whole wizarding world. This peculiar cult (rather pretentiously calling themselves the "Death Eaters" har har) has been showing up all over the place vandalizing shops and terrorizing people. Lately there have even been some disappearances. All of it is duly reported to the prying ears of the public.

All of _that_ can be dealt with.

It's awful, certainly, but I'm somehow removed from it. I don't mean to be callous, but I don't shop at the stores that are being vandalized. I don't personally know anyone who's disappeared. Because of this, it doesn't seem like it's actually happening on some level.

What is real and terrible for me to have to look at is _his_ face staring out at me from some page on the _Prophet._ I see him there, snarling for the photographer with his hair falling out of place despite the slickness of the gel and sweat meant to be holding it back, blood dribbling down his chin, a mad glint in his eyes… but all I can see are the memories.

I don't even remember properly meeting him, I was too young to remember, but I know that he owned me on some level. He owned me with his stupid smile and his stupid laughter and his stupid chocolate. I know that, when I woke up in St. Mungo's broken and confused and scared out of my mind, I asked my mom when he was coming to visit me.

I remember that she cried.

The worst part of it is that, even after all of these years of hating everything about him, some part of me feels absolutely sick to see him in that state. Even though I hate him, that can't change the fact that he was like family to me when he was around. There were several years when, even though I intellectually knew that he was _bad_ I still just wanted him to come back. Those were the years when, even if I knew it was _wrong_, I knew that I would still do anything he told me to, because I was a good, obedient child like that. Like I still am.

Now the hate has had enough time to boil all of the obedience away, but not all of the sentimentality. I've finally spent a sufficient time despising him to know that I'm not powerless to go against anything that he might ask, but that doesn't mean that there isn't still something there.

He still owns me.

Fenrir Greyback owns a piece of my soul.

I haven't even read the article, just looked at the picture. It has to have run twenty times by now: Snarl right in the lens, pull away from the people trying to contain him, large glop of blood mixed with feral drool slides off his chin and settles on his shirt, neck becomes exposed as he throws his head back to _howl_ at the sun in the sky as if it will listen to his pain like the moon does, and then it all repeats. Over and over and over and over…

My gaze is stuck on it. I can't shake it off. The smiling memories in my head and the snarling man on the page in front of me mesh in some sort of an ungodly medley. He smiles for the camera, teeth shining, blood dripping out of his smiling mouth, the moon above him not even doing me the courtesy of coming out from behind the silver lined clouds.

"I'm sorry, Remus," he says.

"Fenrir," I say.

Child's hands reach toward him, foolishly trusting as they always have.

He smirks as he runs away, awkward half-human body stumbling as he leaves.

I don't realize I'm asleep until you shake me awake. Your hand is tentatively on my shoulder like you're not sure if that's okay anymore.

Hell, I'm not sure if that's okay anymore. But I let you do it, because you're calling the shots.

I can't see his picture, now. You've got my paper folded up and shoved under your arm. I want to demand it back, but I don't. Because you're calling the shots.

"What happened?"

The first words you've spoken to me in three days and they demand so much. You haven't warmed me up with a bit of your normal humor, haven't tried to make this easier with a smile or anything. The concern in your face orders me to answer like the glow of the moon commands a response from the Wolf.

_Hoooooooowwwwwwwwl._

I wordlessly point at the _Prophet_. My mouth doesn't quite feel up to opening at the moment.

I take stock of myself as you flip through the pages and I notice that my eyes are swollen. I must have started crying at some point.

How embarrassing.

You inevitably find the right page and stare at the picture, reading the article underneath. Then you stare at me with more confusion than before. "This one?"

I nod.

"What's the problem? Greyback was one of the bad guys. It's good they finally caught him."

I can only make a garbled choking noise in my throat. I hadn't even read the article. I didn't know what it was about. But then, I didn't care.

I don't care.

The emotions swirling around in my chest, crawling over my heart, filling my lungs, settling like sludge in my belly, make me want to scream. I know that I should be happy. On one hand I even am. They finally caught the bastard and I hope they put him down just like they always do with feral animals. But on the other hand, in the childish part of me that still clings to some stupid hope that he couldn't help it, the part of me that he owns, I'm torn to pieces.

And you don't even know that he's the one who turned me.

So I look at you, eyes wide as they'll go in their current swollen state and pat the space beside me on the duvet. You take the offered place and wrap your arm around my shoulder, pulling my body into yours.

I guess that no matter how awkward we get, serious distress will always bring us back here.

"C'mon. Why don't you tell me what's wrong."

And even though my blood crawls at even just the thought of saying any of it aloud, I do. Because this is what you want, and you're calling the shots.

* * *

Sirius

"He'd been friends with my parents for years," you tell me as you watch his photograph snarling in my lap. It's obvious that you see more in that picture than I do. The graphic itself is certainly disturbing and therefore somewhat distracting, but that doesn't account for how captivated you are. I start to move it away because you seem to be in some sort of distress, but you make this little keening noise in your throat and, not only can I not move the paper, I can't make myself move at all.

"He'd come over for dinner, you know. And he'd babysit me. He was always around. He lived in the apartment just below ours. It felt like he was my uncle or something and he'd always bring me chocolate. I was obsessed with it even then. My mum would never give me chocolate. She said it wasn't good for me, but he always had some. Always kept it around," you mumble. You're speaking in clipped half sentences and you're rambling and it's not like you at all. The muscles in my arms tighten until I almost have you sitting in my lap, but you're not quite there. That would put you on top of the paper, and I get the feeling that touching it is something that you are not going to do under any circumstance.

"Just for me, he said," you continue softly. "He kept it around just for me, and mum and dad would just smile like there was nothing they could do to help it and they'd let me eat his chocolate. Because he was 'Uncle Fen' and so it was okay," I don't notice your voice break when you say his name. Well, I do, but I'll say I didn't if you ask later. I can't, however pretend you don't whisper it like it's a secret. I just sit and listen to you talk. I think that you really just need for someone to listen, right now.

"And we never knew about him," you say incredulously, your voice showing the most emotion that you've had since you started speaking and yet your gaze never leaves his visage. "Never knew a thing. He wasn't always around, you see. We'd see him every two or three days and sometimes we let him stay in the guest bedroom because his apartment got flooded out or the plumbing burst or something like that so he got to stay over and I remember going into his room when I was four and I sat at the foot of the bed until he woke up and then we laughed all night and he took out a flashlight from somewhere and made shadow puppets until the sun came up. So we couldn't make them anymore," you pause to take a breath and a hot tear creeps down your face. When it falls on my arm it's cold. "The sun made it too bright for shadows, you know. You can't make shadow puppets in the daytime," the last sentence is whispered as if sacred.

I have never seen you like this before in the entire time I've known you. You have never been this upset. I've seen you yell once, a little under two weeks ago, and that's it for this emotional sort of thing. That I at least know something of what to do with. Shouting I can understand. This puts me at a loss. You're always the one with the infuriatingly calm reason and logic even when the shit really hits the fan. I feel like I'm comforting a child instead of an almost fully grown man, but that's okay. Everyone has to break down sometime.

Almost as if you realize how you've been acting and come back to yourself, you take a shuddering breath in and a similar breath out, your back straightening at the same time. Your eyes, however, do not move from his face.

"You know how, even though you might hate your family, they're still your family and even if you wish they were dead it still kills you to let them down?"

I don't need to respond. You already know the answer. The parallel between your past and my own is sufficient enough for the line of questioning to be dropped with no further mention.

"He was like a second father to me," you insist. "And I hate him. You know that, don't you? _I hate him,_" another tear rushes down your cheek. "I trusted him so much," you say more softly before taking another shuddering breath to calm yourself. But it doesn't work. You hunch over to grab the copy of the _Prophet_ and you fling it angrily to where it lands, unfortunately, face up on my bed, the picture of Fenrir Greyback still facing toward us.

And you still can't look away.

"He was my Uncle Fen," you whisper insistently against the shell of my ear sounding so painfully young that I can't help but pull you closer.

Until this point I'd just been passively listening, but pieces suddenly start to fit together in my mind and the blood runs cold in my veins as I truly give you my full attention.

"Mum said that it was bedtime, that I couldn't go out in the dark because it wasn't safe for 'good little boys like me' to be out when the sun wasn't. But he said he had something to show me," your attention suddenly leaves the newspaper, as if I'm suddenly the most important person in the world. You're lucid again. I can tell because the look that you're giving me is so heavy that I suddenly can't breathe. "It wasn't uncommon to meet him after dark, you know. We'd take out the ladder, or he'd take out the ladder because seven-year-olds don't have the muscle to lift that kind of weight, and we'd sit on the roof and he'd point out constellations to me. Sirius was my favorite, you know," your general aura of intensity briefly flashes "lust" and I hear my heart thump in my chest. It leaves as quickly as it came. "But not that night. That night, as I was sitting out on the steps waiting for him to come with the ladder, I heard this scrabbling at the dirt, and then panting… labored breath. I was convinced that he was hurt, and so I ran out to find him… but I didn't find him."

Your eyes dart away from mine and I feel somehow bereft, but then they're back and you're more intense than ever despite the wry twist to your lips. "He found me."

I want to say something. Anything. But I can't. You hold me hostage in your gaze and, despite the vastly different circumstances, I am reminded of our encounter a few days ago. Though the meaning behind the looks wasn't even remotely the same, the intensity could hardly be more similar.

When you crawl out from behind your books and masks of "The Mild-Mannered Man" you're really a very intense sort of person, Remus. We mere mortals don't stand a chance against you.

"So, when I see that picture of him, in so much obvious distress, finally captured after all of these years of waiting and hating and indecision…" you trail off. "I know that I should be happy. I should feel free for the first time in years and I should feel vindicated. And I do on some level. But on another level entirely, I can't," the intensity leaves as quickly as if someone had cut the bottom off of a Styrofoam cup filled with it and the clarity that it brought is instantly clouded with frustration and confusion. "I can't…"

I know with an obscene amount of certainty that you don't have anything else to say, so all I do is pull you to my chest, rubbing soothingly at your back and whisper that "it's okay." I hold you just as I held you all those weeks ago when I first caught you cutting away at your skin. But this time, it's you that needs it instead of me.

I hold you for almost an hour before I'm ready to let you go.

* * *

A/N:

Hey, just like last week con-crit is awesome and if there are any typos please point them out. This chapter hasn't been edited and re-edited as many times as my chapters usually are, so there might be some awkward wording and/or typos that need to be fixed asap. So point that out if you see it. Also, know that reviews give me warm fuzzy feelings inside and do with it what you will.

I know that it's been FOREVER since I first posted this and this update is a long time coming and is not as long as the other chapters have been. It's probably not as good, either. But, this is largely because I actually didn't originally have this chapter included at all, so I inserted it here after the next one had already been written because the other one didn't make as much sense as I would have liked. And now it makes more sense, but the writing style isn't exactly appropriate given this newly introduced information. You probably don't care about most of that, but (in case you missed it) this means that the next chapter is already written! Yay!

So, it will be up on Saturday the 25th at approximately five o' clock Mountain time.

I know, I know. "If you have it, why don't you post it _now?"_ The answer, my lovelies, is simply that, since this chapter is what it is and was written after the next chapter, a few modifications need to be made to the next one. And then I need to read it over a few more times to make sure that it doesn't suck, and there isn't too much awkward phrasing, and I haven't made any spelling or grammatical errors, and it flows okay and it fits well enough with the new turns, and... stuff.

'Cause I'm sort of OCD like that.

So, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and super thanks to neenabluegirl, Lady Annikaa, moonfoot13, and Sad eyed Lady of The Low Life for reviewing last time. I hope you haven't lost interest because I've taken three months to finally get the next bits posted.

Thanks for reading,

Misprocuous


	4. The seventh and eighth bits

**_Quo Animo:_**

_The seventh and eighth bits._

Remus

I turn the water for the shower hot enough to scald before I strip and step in, conspicuously avoiding the mirror. I never much like what I see, and it will only get worse in the week leading up to the moon. My skin is so pale; ashen with dozens of scars ranging from white to purple, each thick like a night crawler inching across my body. I know that they'll be there forever, but still when I wash I scrape at the skin as if the scars will leave if I can only scrub hard enough. Use enough soap. Turn the water hot enough. They won't, I know, but it's nice to pretend, even if just for a moment.

I hate them more than I've ever hated anything in my life. I hate them more than I hate the moon, more than I hate the ministry for discriminating against me for something I can't control, more than I hate still being caught up in _his_ memory after all these years. More than anything and more than nothing, I _hate_ them and, suddenly, I'm angrier than I've ever been in my life. Angrier than I was when I saw my mum crying over my bed in St. Mungo's, angrier than I was after Severus found out about my lycanthropy, angrier than you've ever made me.

Angry enough to kill.

_It's not fair. It just isn't fair! What did I do to deserve this?_ The dark scar on my hip where Fenrir bit me prickles tauntingly. The proof that his pointy, infectious teeth were inside my skin… His mark of _ownership…_ And, suddenly I can't bear carrying it on my body anymore. I just can't live with it.

That scar needs to go, and if the only way to get rid of it is to slice it right off my body, then that's just what I'll have to do. My razor mysteriously disappeared around the time you found out about my cutting, so I step out of the scalding stream of water and get yours to use instead. I throw it against the ground so that the plastic and the blade separate and pick up the sliver of metal with careful fingers before I step back into the warmth and set about my task.

It hurts. It hurts more than anything has ever hurt me before. More than the cutting, more than your teeth, more than the transformation, more than broken bones, more than when the Wolf tears my skin apart. And I don't like it. It doesn't feel good. The pain is terrible and very nearly unbearable and I feel like I'm going to die when I don't get it all with one slice, but I need to do it. It needs to go.

I press down the blade and slide it right under my skin again, because it needs to be done. I move it up with a grimace and finish the job, because I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it needs to be done. I don't lament the muscle that inadvertently got sliced away along with the scar tissue and the skin, because it needed to be done, and so it was. Done.

I'm not sure whether I start crying before or after the first slice, all I know is that the tears pouring down my face are gushing almost as profusely as the blood pouring out of my hip when you find me.

I'm curled into a fetal position, my head resting on the tacky, mildew-covered tiles, as I watch the blood run down my pelvis and legs to mix with the water in swirls before the two liquids settle on a runny pink fluid and twist down the drain. The water ran cold sometime before you showed up, but I don't notice the difference until I feel the unbearable warmth of your hand on my back.

I'm afraid to look at your face. Just feeling your presence beside me is enough to make my empty heart bleed. The water stops running. I can only assume it's your doing. The same is true when a towel is placed around my shoulders and I'm lifted off the ground, out of my position of safety and comfort. The tears come harder, the breath comes faster.

I clutch your body with no regard for modesty or cleanliness. You are my lifeline and I cling to you as such, but it's okay. You don't seem to mind. You know why I did what I did. You understand even before I mutter, "I hate it so much," with my face buried in your shoulder, my words muffled by the cloth of your robes.

You grasp at my back as if you're afraid I'll disappear, consequently pressing the warm fibers of the towel against my nearly hypothermic back and the squishy scabs over the bite marks you so thoughtfully gave me. Your lips press against my scalp whispering incoherent, comforting words that I can't make out as you stroke my back. For a moment, we're just friends again. We never had sex, we're only two people who have known each other for a significant portion of their lives and know very nearly everything about each other.

Even when the moment passes we remain, bound together by something significantly stronger than magic and significantly more real than love. Something invisible and tangible and invincible all at the same time.

It's changing again. Our relationship. How we relate. For the third time in less than a month we're different again. But this time it doesn't make things awkward and terrible, it just makes them conspicuously not the same.

When my sobbing quietens, you step back to fuss over me. The damp towel (which used to be dry) is wrapped around my exhausted body and you wince as the rough fabric touches my wound though I hardly register the cloth's contact with the raw under-skin. You force a sympathetic smile onto your face and stroke some of the hair out of my eyes with shaking fingers. "What do you say we patch you up a bit, hm?"

I feel more like a child than I have since before I was bitten and it's wonderful. I answer with a nod before I let my head bob forward and rest on your chest. I'm exhausted. Your arms encircle me almost automatically; your chin rests gently on my head. Then you do the unexpected: You pick me up to carry me to the bench by the door and start rifling through the medicine cabinets above and below the sinks. I shiver from a mix between cold and shock. "I'm cold," I tell you, trying to curl further into myself just for some warmth. The blood has mostly clotted, but a heavy stream of it had already dried on my leg before it stopped flowing.

When you turn to regard me, you couldn't be described as anything other than alarmed. You replace the damp towel over my shoulders with a dry one as your Adam's Apple bobs in your throat and your searching becomes more frantic. "Just a minute, Moony. We're just going to put something over your, um…your bloody bits. Then we'll take you to see Madam Pomfrey. She'll make sure you're nice and warm," a moment more and your search turns up fruitful: A gauze pad and some bandages.

It might've been less awkward if I'd put it on, but I was having too much fun playing shivering invalid to offer and you were too busy playing nurse to even consider suggesting any such thing.

"I'm going to get you your robes. I'll be right back," you promise.

You're adorable when you worry. Your eyes, usually so mischievous, turn soft, your mannerisms start to speak of compassion instead of confidence, your eyebrows knit together making you seem more human than god-like. I like you like this.

"I like you like this, Sirius."

You're almost out the door. You give me a confused and worried look before you decide that getting me something to wear is more important than asking me what would prompt me to say such a thing.

Adjusting my uncooperative meat sack so that I can lean against the wall, I close my eyes and realize how exhausted I am. I very nearly fall asleep before you return, but am jolted firmly into consciousness by your anxious shaking of my body. "C'mon, Moony. Stay awake. You're in shock and I don't want you sleeping before we get to the Hospital Wing," my robes are tucked under your arm.

You help me into my clothing graciously, babying me somewhat more than I need or want, and then help me limp to the Hospital Wing.

Despite all of the terrible pain, despite the cold and the exhaustion and the general state of physical shock, I can't make myself regret it. The scar that changed my life is gone, now, and it feels like the weight has lifted.

Fenrir doesn't own me, anymore.

* * *

Sirius

I'm sitting here, just sitting. Watching you sleep. Watching you breathe. Do you know what I did last night? Well, let me just tell you straight out that I didn't sleep. Not a fucking wink. I was awake the entire night. At first I tried, but after a few hours of tossing and turning under the too-warm blankets I just kicked them off and watched the shadows on the ceiling, waiting until the Hospital Wing opened and I could go see you and indulging in that pastime that you seem to think is so great. No, not cutting. Thinking. About you. About your furry little problem, about your scarred skin, about your gangly limbs, your hands, your hair, your eyes... And, I realized a few things.

You have to go through a lot of shit. A _lot_ of it. I always knew you had it bad, but I never realized quite how much you have to deal with. You've got the moon every month, you actually do your school work, you make sure that we Marauders don't get in too much trouble, and now you somehow manage to put up with the shit that I give you for needing to bleed. I have no excuse to be so fucking righteous. No excuse at all. You're the most upstanding person that I know and we're all entitled to our dirty little pleasures. Well, our secrets, anyway. I don't mean to imply that there's anything about you that's "dirty." I should just suck it up, but I can't. I might be able to get past it if I'd come to this realization after having only seen that one night. That first night. But I didn't. I found you on the floor in the showers, bleeding from this gigantic chunk that you cut out of your leg.

I understand that it was for a different reason than just "I like it," but it really doesn't make a difference to me. I thought that you were dead. Truly. The image of your bluish body lying on the floor like a corpse, blood swirling down the drain as if it were somehow _not _completely absurd is an image that won't stop projecting onto the screen that is my mind. Just the thought that it could ever happen again fills my eyes up with very unmanly tears.

_Hear that Moony? You drive me to tears._

Your body stirs in the hospital bed, but your mind isn't ready to move yet. You don't wake up and I'm not sure whether I am disappointed or relieved. On the one hand I want to make sure that you're still all there. I want to know that, even after it all, you're still the same kid I could always bribe to do my homework with a bar of chocolate. But I don't want to have to talk to you. I've decided how I'll deal with this whole thing, but I'm not sure how to say it. I'm probably going to say some things that will make you angry, but it won't be my intention. I don't ever mean to make you mad. I just can't help it. My thoughts are orderly and well-intentioned, my mouth just can't say what I mean. Something gets lost in the translation. But I still have to say my bit. Then it's all up to you.

I reach out and take one of your hands in both of mine, because that seems to be the thing to do in hospitals when you're looking over a sleeping person. I turn it over, studying your calluses, the knobs of your knuckles, your fingerprints. You have nice hands. You'd think that the amount of time I spend studying you I'd have noticed earlier. I scrutinize how the lines on your palms merge seamlessly with the lines on your wrists as if they were all just one continuation. For a long moment, I wish that I had paid more attention to divination just so that I might be able to tell how this is all going to turn out by trying to read them.

How is this going to end up, Remus? Everything has become more complicated. Almost absently, I start tracing the scars on your arms, but tracing turns to stroking, stroking moves from forearms to hands and becomes massaging, and eventually I'm molesting your fingers with mine, marveling at the length, the softness, and the warmth of your skin.

On an impulse I raise your hand to my lips, pressing a soft kiss to the top knuckle of each finger. I'm on your thumb when I realize that your amber eyes are open and watching me intently, scrutinizing me, trying to understand.

Embarrassed, I release you and carefully study the bedspread as heat rushes to my cheeks.

"You don't have to stop," you say gently, a wry smile twisting its way onto your thin, pale mouth. I can't help but smile in return.

"Sorry about that. I didn't mean to rape your hand in your sleep," I apologize somewhat sheepishly.

"I'm sure you couldn't help yourself," is your half-joking reply. Only half joking. The other half is serious, and we both know it, but we laugh regardless. A soft, somewhat forced laugh, but laughter nonetheless.

It seems to help.

I time the silence by counting my heartbeats. Fifteen. It is a quick fifteen heartbeats, to be sure, but that's still a long time in a situation as tense as this one seems. "Do you remember what you said? That first night?" It's my attempt at some sort of segeway into our next Serious Conversation, but it doesn't connect much with our light words fifteen heartbeats ago.

There is a preemptory quirk of your lips, but it's not because of amusement. "I said a lot of things that first night. You'll have to be a bit more specific," you're trying to keep it light, I can tell and I can appreciate it. I'm less likely to make a big mistake that way.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to keep this light.

The flush from earlier which had finally fled my face returns with a new vigor. "Um, that thing about, uh..." I always get like this in these conversations. The confidence that is usually so characteristic of me goes away whenever we get like this. "When you were talking about the, uh, the-the... go ahead and, uh... hurt you stuff?"

Your face with eyes of a beautiful, bright color befitting any owl or cat, takes on the hunted appearance of a rodent. It hurts me to watch so quick a change and know that I am the cause. "I remember having said something along those lines, yes."

"If I do whatever it is that you want done, you'll stop, right?" I start off hesitant, as if I'm pulling out my own teeth with a pair of mismatched salad spoons, but after the first two words the rest fall like boulders and I'm pleading. I'm pleading with you.

I'm begging.

Sirius Black is begging. A Black, the eldest son of the Most Noble House of Black to be exact, is begging something of a werewolf. I would laugh at the thought of my mother's reaction if my throat hadn't closed up with emotion. Begging is not beneath me. Not when it comes to you.

"Sirius," your voice is a mere exhalation of air. A word sighed. "That wasn't the same thing. It--"

"I know," for once, I'm the one cutting _you_ off. "I know that it's different, but I just can't..." it takes me a full three seconds to come up with the words to match my thoughts."It kills me to think of what might happen if something went wrong and I wasn't there to find your body."

The hunted look is completely gone, but in its place is one that speaks of exhaustion both emotional and physical. "Are you sure you want to do this? You probably know already but, Sirius, this is a checkpoint. There's no turning back from here," you warn, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen you look quite so serious in my life.

"I'd never be able to forgive myself if I turned back, now," my honest answer.

Your sigh is heavy. "I'm going to have you make me bleed," you say bluntly. The words send a sick wave of anticipation through me, but it doesn't last long before I become disgusted with myself for wanting to do it on any level much less with the amount of enthusiasm that I consciously know I have.

"You make it sound like a chore, Moony," I joke weakly. Neither one of us even pretends to think it is mildly amusing. A few heartbeats pass before I realize that you're still waiting for my answer.

I move from my seat beside you and sit on the edge of your bed, taking the hand that I molested earlier and looking gingerly at your warm eyes with my own cold ones. "I realize that I'm going to have to make you bleed. It's something that I'm willing to do to make sure that you're safe."

An ironic look flits across your face and I almost have to laugh at the ridiculous opposing nature of the things that I'm saying, the ridiculous situation that the two of us somehow ended up in, but I can't bring myself to do it. For the first time in forever we're sitting in a comfortable silence, and there is no way in the world that I would ever trade that for cheap conversation.

But it is interrupted, anyway, when James and Peter come bursting through the door with no regard for the sharp look that Madame Pomfrey shoots their way.

I let go of your hand, but make no move to leave my perch by your side. The intruders take no notice of anything extraordinary.

They sweep in like a pair of brooms and start up all at once with their uninformed whining.

"Mooooooony!"

"What happened?"

"Where does it hurt, Moonykins?"

"Show papa! He shall kiss and make it better."

You smile at them in that secretive way you have, successfully hiding the discomfort from our earlier conversation before you look to me. Your face stays with the same easy mask you donned earlier, but the message you send is clear: It's up to you to tell them, Sirius. Do what you will with it.

It's almost in me to resent that you're making this my problem, but the words come with surprising ease. "Idiot was trying to save time by shaving in the shower. Dropped the soap, sliced off part of his leg while he was trying to catch his balance. Pomfrey said it's lucky he didn't cut any deeper or the muscles would be so buggered that he'd have a pimp limp for the rest of his lonely life."

Relief screams from behind your silent smile as you fend off our friends, and right now, I'm more certain about this than I've been about anything that I can remember.

Your secret is safe with me, Moony. As for the rest of you, the part of you that is here and real and substantial and physical, I can't make any promises.

* * *

A/N:

As always, if there are any typos please point them out. I don't really like the first part of Remus' bit, so any suggestions on something to change there or silly little things would be appreciated. Or something like the lovely wonderful amazing larkagurl2/Rinata-chan pointed out, where the term "emo" didn't exist in the seventies. So I changed that right away and THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH! A thank you also to Anonymous for pointing out that "It" should have been "I."

I've got the first bit of the next chapter done and the second bit started, but don't expect it out anytime soon. Hopefully not three months (again), but not likely within two weeks.

This time, thank yous go out to Rome J Wolf, Ignea, PharoahDeli, Miss Heather, Renai-Chan, Klippie, moonfoot13 and the aforementioned larkagurl2 and Anonymous. You all rock my world, as do my readers. But, alas. I cannot mention you all by name because I do not know who you are.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading,

Misprocuous


	5. The ninth and tenth bits

**_Quo Animo:_**

_The ninth and tenth bits._

Remus

The Sorting Hat almost put me in Slytherin, did you know? I know that you all thought that it took so long to sort me because it was debating between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, but it was really very nearly Slytherin. It's quite understandable, really, what with having the kind of secret that I do and the ways I have to hide it. Sure, you found out eventually, but I managed to keep it under wraps for three years even with all of your intrusiveness and finagling.

It's really quite an insightful bit of haberdashery, that Hat.

So, you see, while I know that you think our little chat in the Hospital Wing ended with an unspoken but generally understood promise, I have no problem convincing myself that the conversation was stopped midway through and, therefore, any contract that may or may not have been made in the process does not go into effect until such time as both of the participants (you and me) have explicitly agreed to something.

Meaning that what I am doing right now does not bother me at all.

I'm back to where this all started, but this time I'm sitting in a nice little sofa in front of a fire with a book on my lap as I do it. I learned my lesson last time. I really did: No more cutting where you can catch me.

At the moment I am in the Room of Requirement. It is in the form of a very quaint little library, complete with all of my favorite books. The atmosphere is cozy, because this cutting and bleeding that I am doing is not an angsty thing. It is, rather, a comfortable thing. A wonderful thing. A familiar thing. More familiar than you, even.

I've done this for years. Years before I met you. It actually started with a foray of experimentation. I try not to let on, but the two or three days before the full moon are very, _very_ tense for me. I am edgy, I am horny, I am anxious, I am restless, my skin crawls, my bones ache, and my organs feel like they're coated in a layer of slime. I know that it doesn't sound pleasant, but it's difficult to communicate exactly how _un_pleasant it is.

So, over the course of the years, I tried several different brands of self-medication, some of them sanctioned and even helped along by my parents, others quite the opposite. I tried distracting myself through normal means like reading or watching the muggle television and only got distracted from the distraction by the anxiety. I tried staying drugged up on sleeping draught for the days leading up to it but found that it only made the transformation itself significantly more painful. I tried eating copious amounts of chocolate, which was fun but really did nothing to help. Suffice it to say that nothing helped. Wolfsbane did the most, but was far too expensive to buy more of than was absolutely necessary to aid with the night of the transformation. So once, about two days before the moon, when my stomach was making sloppy, messy love to my lungs, and my hands were simply trembling too much to cooperate, I dropped a glass of water, which promptly shattered all over the kitchen floor sending shards of glass shrapnel into my foot.

It hurt for a moment, but then this lovely prickling feeling raced up my body, first making the short, fine hairs on my legs stand on end, then moving up to set my stomach firmly back in its place, then straight up my tense face and neck to the very top of my scalp where it delightfully pooled. For the rest of that day I had tingles instead of restlessness and pleasure instead of aching bones.

Somewhere, I once read that pleasure is merely relief from tension. My tension was and is most certainly relieved by this.

So, since I have been doing this increasingly often and with increasing amounts relief since I was nine years old, I hardly believe that, after seven years of intensive practice, something is going to go wrong leaving me bleeding starkers on the bathroom floor under a cold stream of water again. That was something entirely different and should be treated as such.

Plus, you can't actually expect me to seek you out to help me with this when things have only just gone back to normal between us.

I mean, sure. If you suddenly sat on my lap and accosted my person with your (lovely, wonderful, painful) teeth and proceeded to do something very undignified again, I wouldn't be able to turn you down. You are irresistible in that regard, I must confess. But there is no way that I am going to instigate any such thing with no more reason than a half-implied promise that was never made in the first place.

Never _really _made.

Okay, so maybe I feel like a total prick for having talked myself into this loophole, but come on, Sirius. How long have you known me? Have I ever been a person who was fond or even capable of confrontation? No. That's you. It's always been you.

You've always been the one to face things, attacking them with an enviable single-mindedness that I am so enamored of when it is not directed at me.

You really are in every sense a Gryffindor: brave and brash and stupidly loyal. Me? I am a failure in that regard. It's one thing to self-medicate when you don't have any other viable options, but to tell a very preferable one to stuff it because I'm afraid?

I really am pathetic. I don't deserve you. Any of you. Not as much as I have, not as much as I want.

But that is something I can change to an extent, I realize. Sighing, I set my book aside, sticking the bit of glass between pages to use as a bookmark.

A Slytherin I might have been, but a Gryffindor I am. Any decision that I may have had once has already been made.

Physically, the walk back to the Gryffindor Common Room is uncomfortable and exhausting. Mentally it's excruciating. I make myself take longer steps, faster steps, steps in the right direction. I know that if I slow down I'll never get there. I'll never make it to you.

Somehow, I do. Make it to you, that is.

I almost turn around and leave at the sight of you. You're smiling. You're laughing. You're smiling and whispering furtively with James as you lean over some sheet of paper. Planning some new prank, no doubt.

Even if nothing had ever changed between us I wouldn't interrupt you, now. You're never as happy as you are when you're scheming with James, and even as a prefect I've never been able to deny you anything, least of all happiness. I know you need to stock up on enough of it during the school year to last you the long, barren summer months.

But I spent too much effort making it here to just run away, now. So I take a seat in a fluffy chair-and-a-half and try to pretend not to watch you.

However, I've always been terrible at playing pretend. I have no imagination. That's why I spend so much time with you and James. I have what you don't have and you've got what I'm missing. I am the reason to complement your mad creativity. I am the Igor to your Doctor Frankenstein: I hand you the tools, but you have all of the ideas. You do all of the real work. You get the recognition. You deserve it. You and James.

And me and Peter off to the side. The sidekicks. Only here to boost your egos and offer the occasional assist. But despite the second-class status we wouldn't leave for anything. It's better to be a secondary or momentary consideration than it is never to be considered at all.

I feel you looking at me and I give up pretending to not pay attention. I flat out stare at you until the frighteningly beautiful smile melts from your frighteningly beautiful face. You say something to James and then start walking toward me.

God, you're gorgeous. And you know it. It's so much a part of you, so much a part of your perception of yourself, that even when you're not thinking about it the attractiveness oozes from you in the way you place your feet and the way you swing your arms and the way your hold your head. You are every bit the aristocrat you don't want to be, and every bit the rebel you strive to be. The one is not distinguishable from the other. Your face could not possibly be more Black. I see your features mirrored in the faces of every one of your Slytherin cousins, each as impossibly perfect as yours. But while their cheekbones are pale and stark, yours are constantly adorned with a grin and colored a delightful Gryffindor red. While their sharp chins are symmetrical and precise, yours is softened by the bit of scruff that you can never be bothered to get rid of. While you share their harsh, light eyes, yours are bright with a sense of warmth that never reaches theirs.

Except for right now. Your silver Black eyes are refusing to meet mine with an unmistakable emotion made with equal parts duty and shame.

I can't stand to do this to you. I should have stayed in the Room of Requirement with my glass and my book and my lonely chair. I should have listened to my instincts and left you alone. There is nothing that I want more than to not be here, right now.

I almost bolt but… I can't.

I am sick and exhausted and uncomfortable and it's your fault for caring about the welfare of a stupid quasihuman that turns into a bloodthirsty monster every month. If you're not going to let me take care of myself, then I'll just have to take advantage of you. Have you take advantage of me.

It hardly matters which. The result is the same, either way.

* * *

Sirius

A look and a head tilt. That's all that I really give you. I think that it's the universal sign for, "let's go upstairs," and even if it's _not_ you still manage to get what I'm trying to say.

You leave before I do. James knows that something weird's been going on between us. Thinks it's just a couple of mates who've had a bit of a tiff, though. I don't want to get him too suspicious. Either we'll get everything worked out and he doesn't have to know anything, or things will work out in a different way and we'll have to tell him later. No matter how it ends up, it has nothing to do with him just now.

He's not as oblivious as I'd expect him to be, though. The knowing look he shoots me when I head off is enough to tell me this.

I get to the dorm a few minutes later and find you sitting on your bed. Join you there— have a sit beside you. And that's how we stay for the next five minutes (it feels like much longer), in an atmosphere of suffocating tension, the both of us sitting on your bed, studying the ground like it's going to be on the NEWTS. Somehow, I'm the one to break the silence.

"So… I, uh, I take it we're here 'cause you wanted something?" It's kind of a dick question. We both know why we're here. I make the mistake of looking at you at the same time you look at me, and our gazes repel like magnets exposed to the wrong sides of each other.

And silence, as awkward and awful and uncomfortable as it is, returns.

Briefly, the awkwardness filling the room is all of a sudden something more like indecision, and then goes right back to the same apprehension as before. But you've begun to move, so I know something has changed. I chance a look at you and know immediately what you're doing.

You're pulling up your shirt sleeves to show me a fresh batch of red lines that have been etched diagonally into your wrists.

Anger isn't instant, this time, but rather builds up like heavy traffic on an old bridge—pile on enough cars, and I'm bound to break. _We had an agreement, Moony. There was a promise. Do you even know how difficult it was for me to-_

You begin to speak before I'm mad enough that I can explode. "I didn't want…" you falter for a moment, then pick back up on your train of thought, the stuttering words picking up speed and spilling from your mouth. "Didn't want to- to make you do something you didn't want to do. And I wasn't going to. And then—" again you break off, searching for the words.

You find them. "Then I realized that if you didn't want to, you wouldn't."

You get up. Start pacing. "And maybe that's expecting too much of you but…" and trail off again. But I get the sense that you're not looking for the right words this time so much as just deciding not to talk anymore.

So I look at you. Really look at you. You, with your skin and your scars and your hands and your heart and you're worrying yourself into early age (but when have you ever been young?) and you're my _best fucking friend_.

And then I start to talk, and you stop pacing.

"It's a lot to expect, but it isn't unreasonable," my voice is so steady and sure that I startle myself. I'm nothing but a swirl of uncertainty and something that only you would be able to find a word for, but it's not comfortable. It probably has a weird two-part name like "cognitive dissonance" or something.

But my voice doesn't let you know any of that. "And it's also reasonable to expect that I won't do anything that I don't want to. I never do, after all," I sigh and get up to stand in front of you. "But, whether I _want_ something or not, you're my friend. I would do anything for you."

You laugh bitterly and look away. Start to get up. "Then I guess I should go."

"No," My hands are on your shoulders, making sure you can't leave. "You shouldn't do that."

It's like you face can't decide whether it wants to look confused or hopeful and I can tell you're not quite letting yourself believe me, but I can't blame you for being cautious. I'm not exactly making this easy on you.

"I'd do anything for you, Moons, whether I wanted to or not. But this is something that I _do_ want."

You finally look at me. Grab the collar of my shirt and pull my head to yours, hands shaking, eyebrows pulled together like trying to make the words you want to say is a physical struggle instead of a mental process.

"God, Sirius, I just…. You _don't_…. If…"

I watch your mouth. Our foreheads are squished against each other and I manage to fasten my gaze to the way your lips form the syllables that aren't coming out just right.

"I just _need_ for—"

And then you stop. Because I kiss you. At least, I assume that that's the reason you stop. It's not like it's a forceful, breath-stealing kiss that would get in the way of you making words, or anything. Just a little peck on the bottom lip of your open, unsuspecting mouth.

Another few seconds of silence, and I do it again. Silent, gentle, quick. Almost not there. But I follow it with a little more. A suck. A nip. And then you're joining in. Moving with me. Your hands creep up to tangle in my hair, mine somehow end up in the back of your school-issued uniform trousers that are just a little too big for your slim hips. You're trying to eat my face, I'm trying to pull you underneath my skin one hump, one grind, one finger-shaped bruise at a time.

I move my mouth bit by bit until I've sucked my way down your chin to bite at your neck. Your reaction is instant. A gasp, a strangled moan, the transition of your hold on my head so that your upper arms are pushing into my shoulders, hands forcing my face further into your skin as if demanding _moremorehardermore_ like I know you're thinking, and I can't be anything other than happy to oblige.

One of my hands finds its way to your back, untucks your shirt, crawls underneath and pulls you further into me. Claws at your skin and you _writhe_ and _squirm_ and I've never been so excited for sex before in my life.

A few steps backward and the bed catches the back of your knees. There are a few moments of clumsiness and awkward fumbling when we tumble onto the mattress but then it's just more movement and _breath_ and trying to climb inside of each other.

My fingers clumsily fumble with the buttons and zippers(_since when are there this many obstacles to getting a pair of trousers open_) on the front of your trousers and I'm trying to unbutton your shirt with my teeth because I just want it _off_ and you're laughing at me which hardly makes it any easier but then you're helping me and I could just kiss you and so I just kiss you and kiss you and kiss you and kiss you.

And kiss you.

And kiss you.

Everything suddenly slows down, but it's okay because, even though it's you that _needs_ this, I just _want_ it so badly I could cry.

But I don't. Because that would be a totally lame thing to do.

So I chew on your ear instead and then the pace starts to pick up again because you grab onto my ass and start rolling your hips against mine (_mine, you're mine_) and I squirm out of my pants just so we can be closer (_closercloser_) and then we're gone, tumbling into a flurry of teeth and skin and heat and _moremoremore_ touching and gasping and desperate, desperate want.

* * *

A/N:

w00t! I have over 15,000 words now not including author's notes! Good job team. XD

Sorry for taking so long to get this out. I'd blame circumstances, but I know you don't really care about those and it's not like there were really any important ones, anyway. It was just a wicked bad case of writer's block. I rewrote Sirius' bit three times before I finally found something I didn't hate.

Thanks go out to Miss Heather, moonfoot13, Renai-chan, OverTheMoon42, Sad eyed Lady of The Low Life, Girlfrommarz, .zip, elana, runningwithscissors75, Shizuka21, sugarland588275, and GiantInflatableWalrus, all of whom are far too kind. Special thanks to Medulla Oblongata for pointing out that I focused on their eyes way too much. I've gone through and made some edits and removed upwards of forty references in four measley chapters. I think it's a little better now.

Anyway, I have no idea when the next chapter will come out, but there are only going to be one or two more. This way, at least, you know that you won't have to wait for too many more bits 'till the end finally comes. And, don't worry. Even if it takes a really long time (which, knowing me, it probably will) the rest will come out eventually.

Thanks,

Misprocuous


	6. The eleventh and twelfth bits

**_Quo Animo:_**

_The eleventh and twelfth bits._

Remus

We're not asleep. Neither you nor I. There are no pretenses of it, either. We've magicked away the worst of the unsightly fluids (read: semen), and slipped our trousers back on, and now we're just lying in my bed, tangled up in each other. The rough pad of your thumb is abrasive, distracting as it wears circles in my skin. Is the least of my current bodily aches. I don't think that you actually broke my skin anywhere with your teeth, this time, but that doesn't mean that I'm not covered in shallow scratches and dark bruises and love bites and teeth marks.

You're curled around me, an arm thrown haphazardly across the same marked and scarred stomach your head rests upon. One of my legs is trapped between yours, the other dangles from the mattress, toes just brushing the floor. My hand absentmindedly plays with your hair, now tousling, now resting, now stroking. We breathe softly. Evenly. Contentedly. And I am satisfied in a way that is almost entirely unrelated to sex.

There was a time when fifteen minutes was forever. When "enough" was actually a time stamp that meant something. That time has passed. Now it's hardly even an instant, but the satisfaction sticks even as we begin to move. It's not like we can actually stay here forever. After all, I've got places to be. Furniture to tear up. Ghost stories to legitimate.

I'll ache in much worse ways come morning.

"Hey, uh," there's a hand clutching mine when I finally sit up. The kicker is that it belongs to you. The voice, too. And it's not the voice or a man that's uncertain or afraid like it was all those mornings ago or angry like I feared that it might be. It's just you. As I've always known you to be: _there_.

A long moment follows in which there is no sound and it occurs to me that you reached out without any plans of where to go from there. It is an action that is so undeniably _you_ that I can't help but smile.

I've never known anyone else who is so quick to plunge into anything headfirst. You don't bother with a safety net, or restraint, or plans. You completely disregard any worries and possible consequences. Lately you've been falling more into yourself, and I'm sure that I'm the one to blame, but just _this_, this one simple spontaneous action is enough to let me know that you're okay. Really okay.

I press your hand to my lips because I _can't help it_. Not that I would have stopped myself had I been able to. "See you tonight."

Suddenly your eyes aren't smiling so brightly. But you're still wearing that expression that says you're "okay and just worried about Moony" as opposed to "freaking the fuck out over _everything_ and it's all your fault."

So you let go of my hand and I put on my shirt and cloak because the air is much chillier outside of your immediate proximity. I wish I could stay for longer.

But the moon is calling, and she won't be denied.

There's a moment when I'm sorely tempted to just crawl back into your space. Just get back in the general realm of you. Surely the Wolf could just hold off a few more minutes. Except for how I know it can't. I know it won't be denied.

So I run, instead.

And it's not easy. I'm sore from the moon, sore from the strenuous activities (_ahem_) that we just engaged in, and I'm hardly athletic at the best of times.

Yet I run. Because it is absolutely necessary for me to do so. This is not necessarily so that I get there on time, I did leave myself a sufficient time-cushion for safety, so much as it is because of a sudden rush of excess _energy_ that I'm not used to and don't quite know how to deal with.

I make myself run. I make myself poke the knot to stop the willow's whomping. I make myself walk down the passage to the shack and I make myself go up the stairs. I cover up the mirror (which really has no business being there) before I make myself disrobe so I won't ruin my clothes.

Then I huddle under a blanket to keep warm in the chilly house until I start to feel the prickling of hair growing in on my back. That's where it all starts. Slowly. But it gets faster when my nails start to grow and my teeth become longer and sharper and more dangerous and it snowballs from there into a frenzy of slick crunching noises as bones crack and shoot out, and screams progress through the halfway point between human and canid and things begin to smell. To scent. Ears pick up on more. Mice in the floorboard, bugs in the walls, scampering. Uninteresting. Only one thing is important.

_where are you_

Down the stupid human stairs, back up them, down again.

_where are you_

Something in the way. _Smash_. Not anymore. Being alone hurts, being alone _hurts._

_where are you_

A wall with a hole in the shape of a large paw. A wolf without a pack is shame a wolf without a pack is shame a wolf without a pack is shame a wolf without a pack is shame a wolf without a pack is shame a wolf without a pack is same and it _hurts _and _where are you._

A couch gains a set of claw marks and is upturned on the other side of the room. A howl splits the loneliness and makes it more. But then the _scent_ hits the air and it doesn't hurt so much anymore.

_there you are_

The large antlered one, _james_ something offers, struts forward leading the small one _peter_ and _you._

_pack_

And _you._

You step forward. Offer your stomach. Accepted. And then _freedom_. All life in the damn human place (_the shack_ says the something) with its scritching walls and scampering floors is only pretend alive. Outside, with creeping trees and crawling dirt and the moon and _the_ _moon_ is where the real live is.

Another cry moves the air, but it's a happy one, joined by yours.

And we're off.

* * *

Sirius

It's not going to work out between us. I can already see how this whole thing is going to go. How it's going to end. It'll be great for a while. Unbelievable. Like it is. But then we'll start getting comfortable with it. _I'll_ start getting comfortable with it. Being less careful. Bothering with less control. Reverting to the primal, selfish fuck that I hate to know that I am.

I'll start to bite deeper. Bruise darker. Fuck harder. I'll stop paying as much attention to what I'm doing to you, start concentrating more on what I'm getting from it. 'Cause Sirius fucking Black is a brat like that. Selfish like that. Can never keep the focus off himself. Myself.

I'll start to really hurt you. I know I will. The worst part is that I know I won't be able to make myself stop. Won't be able to make myself care enough to stop.

You certainly won't make me stop. You'll just gasp sharper and move more desperately in that turned-on _moremoremore_ way that you have that breaks my brain. You'll push into it, feed it, make me feel it too. Won't stop it. Won't fix it.

Won't even see what's wrong.

No. I'll be the only one suffering for it. I'll love it as much as I hate myself for it, and then I'll start to hate you for making me hate me.

At least, that's the only way I can see it going down.

Of course, I've never really been near a working relationship between lovers or, you know, whatever it is we are. I don't really know how it is supposed to work. Or, it's more like I know how it's _supposed_ to work, I just have no idea how it actually _would._

And now you've got me thinking about things like _relationships,_ and big scary words like _commitment_ and maybe even _love,_ which really isn't a word that's all that long but is certainly one of the biggest ones out there, starting to tug at my mind in places I'm not really interested in thinking about and _I don't want to be a bloody girl._

But I suppose that part of the point of this is that neither of us has to be.

And fuck if that isn't a revelation-and-a-half.

The walk from the Gryffindor common room to the Hospital Wing is probably a little bit shorter than it is from any other House, but it's not like it's just a minute. It's actually a _walk._ As in, the amount of distance that old or fat people have to go before they consider it _exercise_. And I need that. Not the exercise, the time. I know I'm really not usually big on the whole introspection thing, but right now I just need a moment to think, and this is the perfect opportunity.

Because it's a pretty long distance to walk, and I really just can't think as quickly about these things as you can.

I have to force myself to go through it logically. That doesn't come naturally to me, you know. Logic. I work better with feelings. Not like _emotions_, but like gut instincts where there are some things you just _know_ and you're one of those things. But I know you're going to make us do the feelings talk thing. And if you don't, well, then I will. Because it's important to you even if you don't want to admit it. And I know these things. I've been your roommate and best mate for years, and these things are the sort of things that you just end up knowing after a while.

So.

...Logically...

...

Never mind.

Screw logic. Logic is yours. I've always sucked at it. And anyway how am I supposed to figure anything out when I can't even pick a place to _start? _These are the facts. They're really simple.

I like you. You like me. The sex is awesome.

We can work the rest out later. And if we're a little bit doomed, as I think we might be... well, what's a little doom between friends?

Actually, that's a terrible argument, too. Doom in any context is awful. Especially when it's got anything to do with you. The real argument is about how there's nothing I can do about it- about this- and that I know myself too well to even think that I could make myself not let this happen. Or to think that I could stay away from you in this (or fucking any) situation. This thing has happened without my permission and has continued to just _go_ even when I dug in my heels and tried to stop it.

A testament to my awesome self control, I'm sure.

I walk into the hospital wing. Last night wasn't a bad transformation as far as they go, but I still need to be there. Here. And I see you. Lying there. Sleeping and vulnerable and as torn apart as you could possibly look with your skin still put together. And, just for a moment, I think I love you too much to let this happen. To let everything end like that. Like I'm afraid it's going to. And then you open your eyes and smile at me. That broken, old as planets, soft smile. The one that's crooked and does that thin scar going from your bottom lip to the middle of your chin in a paler color than the rest of your face. And I smile back, and I _know_ with everything in me that I love you too much to deny you a single experience you ask for that's in my power to give.

It's okay, though. About our ending.

I've been wrong before.

Let's just hope that I can be wrong when I want to be, too.

* * *

A/N:

Well, that's it.

First story I've ever been able to finish. Ever. This is seriously a milestone. AWESOME.

So, thank you so much to all of the people who favorited and reviewed and even just read and stuff. But especially the favers and reviewers. You not only reminded me that I did have a story to finish, but also made my squishy insides feel warm and fuzzy, too. Not in a gross way, though ;P. Now I've just got to go through and fix it all. When you take several years to write a relatively short piece the writing style and standards and everything change, go figure. If you want moar stuff, well, I've got a few fluffy one shots and a pretty damn angsty one you can check out if you want to, but they're really nothing special. Otherwise, check out my favorites. Or my community. I think I've been reading this pairing long enough to have found a few good ones.

And sorry it took so long to get out this measley chapter. There were just a ton of little things that bothered me about it that I couldn't quite figure out how to fix...

So... yeah!

Thanks,

Misprocuous


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